What am I reading, now? The Book of Wool, non-fiction, about…wool and wool yarn. Really. There’s story there, too, history, origins. Here’s the thing about craft books, or any instructional/education book: You are part of the narrative. (Maybe that’s true of any book, fiction or non-. The existence of a narrative requires someone to receive it. Even if you’re telling yourself stories…things happen, but if no one knows about it…)
Annnnnd…pulling back from the brink of that thought-line, just barely. How ya’ll doin’?
Before that was a science fiction novel, the third book in Jeff Carlson’s Plague Year trilogy, Plague Zone.
I suppose the Plague Year trilogy could be considered a kind of post-apocalyptic tale (after all, the book starts out with the catastrophe already happened, a nanotech disaster that has nearly destroyed the ecosystem below a certain elevation along with a great percentage of humankind), but “apocalypse” implies an end.
Catastrophe, on the other hand, is part of a continuum, an ebb and flow. If you haven’t been killed by it, there is still the hope of an upswing.
That is why there is a story here. The tale isn’t just about the end of everything or even mere survival (though, to be sure, there is nothing “mere” about what his characters go through). It’s also about saving the world.
So: disaster, science, geopolitical repercussions, cannibalism, duty, love, survival, death, dread and hope…
